Joseph Perkins: Two societies, separate and unequal, still exist

Aug. 30, 2013

Updated 8:49 a.m.

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President Lyndon Johnson speaks to members of his advisory commission on civil disorders at the group's first meeting, in 1967. Otto Kerner, left, of Illinois, was the chairman of the group; New York City Mayor John Lindsay, right, was vice chairman. The panel issued its report in 1968. ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

President Lyndon Johnson speaks to members of his advisory commission on civil disorders at the group's first meeting, in 1967. Otto Kerner, left, of Illinois, was the chairman of the group; New York City Mayor John Lindsay, right, was vice chairman. The panel issued its report in 1968. ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

This is a milestone year in black history. It not only marks the 50th anniversary, commemorated this week, of the March on Washington. It also marks the 45th anniversary of the Kerner Commission report, which followed the race riots of the mid-1960s.

The commission, formally known as the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders, identified the cause of black unrest in cities throughout the country:

White society was “deeply implicated” in the plight of poor blacks, according to the report. “Pervasive discrimination and segregation in employment, education and housing had resulted in the continuing exclusion of great numbers of Negroes from the benefits of economic progress.”

To address the “state of crisis” among black Americans, the Kerner Commission proposed a national policy of “ghetto enrichment” to bring poor blacks into the mainstream of American life.

The commission recommended that the government create 2 million new jobs for blacks over a three-year span; that it use its powers to integrate school systems throughout the country; that it expand the scope of the welfare system to include greater numbers of blacks; and that it expanded public housing programs.

As it happened, a ghetto enrichment policy of sorts already was under way as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's vaunted “war on poverty.” In fact, LBJ went so far as to predict “Americans will look back on these 1960s as the time of the great American breakthrough … the victory of prosperity over poverty.”

He was dead wrong.

After a half-century and roughly $20 trillion in government spending on anti-poverty programs, “the United States hasn't made much progress closing the economic chasm between blacks and whites,” as the Washington Post lamented this week.

But here's the anniversary story unreported not only by the Post, but pretty much by the entire mainstream media:

Our nation has indeed become “two societies,” as Kerner warned 45 years ago. And those two societies are indeed “separate and unequal.” But not by race, “one black, one white.” But by class, one black, upwardly mobile; the other one also black, but pathologically poor.

The reality is that the black upwardly mobile have far more in common with their white counterparts than they do with the black underclass. They are much better educated. They have much better jobs. They earn much more and live in much better neighborhoods.

Yes, some 28 percent of blacks are living in poverty, according to the Census Bureau. But 30 percent are middle- or upper-middle class, earning $50,000 to $150,000. And another 4 percent earn more than $150,000. That includes some 35,000 black millionaires and one noteworthy black billionaire.

Why have the black upwardly mobile prospered while the black underclass has been left behind? Because of behavioral differences between the latter and the former.

Indeed, blacks who earn college degrees, who get married before having children, who hold down full-time permanent jobs are just as likely as whites to be upwardly mobile; to enjoy an exceedingly abundant life.

Unfortunately, the black high school graduation rate is 62 percent. Only 31 percent of black adults are married. Only 27 percent of black babies are born to two-parent families. And some 22 percent of the black labor force is underutilized.

Those are the pathologies that are holding back the black underclass. And while the government has a role to play in lifting up that cohort, primary responsibility resides with the black community itself.

Indeed, to those of us to whom much has been given, who owe our upward mobility to the civil rights movement, it is our moral obligation to lift up those among us left behind, by promoting the virtues of education, two-parent families and work instead of welfare.

Those are the keys to realizing the American Dream. No matter one's skin color.

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